A large number of applications require transferring power and data through a galvanic isolation barrier of several kilovolts.
Applications of such systems are in several fields such as industrial (e.g., high-side gate drivers), medical (e.g., implantable devices), isolated sensor interfaces, and lighting. The industry standard VDE 0884-10 has been developed to expressly take into account the availability of highly integrated semiconductor isolators with micro-scale isolation barriers, either using magnetic or capacitive transfer techniques. Either post-processed or integrated isolation capacitors can be adopted to perform galvanically isolated data communication.
Commercial isolated DC-DC converters typically adopt post-processed isolation transformers by using an architecture which includes: an isolated link for the power transmission (isolated power channel), which typically includes a VHF power oscillator, an isolation transformer, and a power rectifier; a further isolated link for the feedback path used to control the output power (typically by a PWM modulation of the power oscillator); and a plurality of dedicated isolated links, each one respectively for one of the data channels.
These architectures require at least three isolation transformers, one for the power channel, one for the feedback control channel, and one for the data channel.
There is a need in the art to address the drawbacks of prior implementations, by facilitating regulation of the power while maintaining a single channel through the galvanic isolation barrier.